Being a police wife isn’t for the faint of heart.
There’s a lot of loneliness. A lot of stress. A lot of overwhelm. A lot of taking care of the homefront while your husband is out battling darkness.
And on top of that, there’s a husband who’s stressed and overwhelmed who needs you to take care of him, too.
It’s enough to make anyone lose their minds. It’s enough for anyone to start asking, “What about me?”
When you’re bustling around trying to take care of children, bills, the house, the cars, meals, and everything else, it’s so frustrating to have your husband come home and need you, too.
Sometimes, it’s going to feel like more than you can take. I totally understand.
Boy, do I understand.
4 Things To Do When You Feel Overwhelmed By Police Wife Life
Take care of yourself.
First of all, I need you to know it’s okay for you to need things. It’s totally fine. Being a good wife absolutely doesn’t mean subverting all your desires.
I’d love to say I never struggle with this. I’d love to say I’m always totally forthcoming with what I need from my husband and don’t expect him to come home and immediately see what I need him to do.
It’s not the case, though. And I bet you can relate.
So – make sure to actually ask him for what you need. If you’re feeling lonely, ask him to take you on a date – even if that just means catching a movie on Netflix sans smartphones.
If you’re overwhelmed with chores, ask him to do a few (and be specific about which ones – it’s more likely they’ll actually get done :))
If you’re overwhelmed with the kids, lock yourself in your room and abandon ship.
Just kidding on that last one… Kind of.
But the point is, just be sure your husband actually knows what you need. The less time he has to spend guessing, the more time he can spend actually helping you.
Pray
Prayer is a great way to start. Seriously, I have to depend on it all the time. Sometimes they’re super grouchy prayers, like “Please help my husband see what a jerk he’s being.” Which I’m sure Heavenly Father totally laughs at, because he gets it. He knows exactly what we’re going through – both of us.
Which is why I try so hard to understand His plan for our family, actually. Because I know He knows both of our hearts. He hears our prayers. He knows what we need.
And His plan is going to be amazing in the end – even if it sucks sometimes in the middle.
But if I want to understand His plan and be able to do the things I need to do, I need to start by praying.
Prioritize your energy.
Look, I know you’d love to have awesome dinners all the time, a perfectly cleaned house, a toned body, and look absolutely perfect whenever your husband comes home. That would be awesome. Obviously.
But seriously, it’s not possible. So let it go.
Take the pressure off yourself to have it all together. You only have so much time and energy. If that means you have hot dogs for dinner more than you’d like to admit, so be it. No judgment here.
That also means you’re going to have to learn to say no to the things that don’t matter. That might be hard if you’re a people pleaser like me, but when it comes down to it, if you’re spending so much time trying to appease other people that your family gets the worst version of you, that sucks. Don’t do that!
If you struggle here, do me a favor:
- Write down a complete brain-dump list of everything you need or want to do in the next week.
- Re-order it by most to least important.
- Draw a line under the top 20% of the list.
- Forget about the other 80%. Just for the next week.
It might sound a little extreme – but it’s a total sanity-saver when you find yourself having bitten off more than you can chew.
Outsource, outsource, outsource.
Like I said, you can’t do everything. And you may not want to do everything – which is totally fine.
Is your house in desperate need of a deep clean and you just don’t have the energy? Check out Groupon and see if you can find a deal on a cleaning service, even just once.
Need a minute to breathe away from your kids? Get yourself a babysitter, then go out and get whatever fancy coffee your heart desires. And enjoy drinking it all by yourself.
And as a free solution, make sure to connect with friends and family. Even if they can’t help you in a hands-on way, they can help you not feel quite so alone.
The thing I need you to remember is you can totally do this! You were made for this. And even though it’s going to break your heart sometimes, this whole thing is just going to make you stronger.
Haha! I was going to write- “you have no idea how much I needed this today!”….then I realized, you do. How many times do we feel so alone yet there are so many around us who are feeling (or have felt!) the same way!!! “There is nothing new under the sun”. Thank you for *writing* how you were feeling at the moment and passing on this valuable diamond to me of your feelings so I know I’m not alone.
Absolutely, Rebecca! I’m so happy it helped 🙂
I really needed to hear this. I have been having a really rough patch lately. This gave me hope and light at the end of my tunnel. So thank you for your words of wisdom and the encouragement.
I’m so glad Teresa 🙂